Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed

We’re used to talking about how tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon rule the internet, but what about daemons? Ubiquitous programs that have colonized the Net’s infrastructure—as well as the devices we use to access it—daemons are little known. Fenwick McKelvey weaves together history, theory, and policy to give a full account of where daemons come from and how they influence our lives—including their role in hot-button issues like network neutrality. Going back to Victorian times and the popular thought experiment Maxwell’s Demon, McKelvey charts how daemons evolved from concept to reality, eventually blossoming into the pandaemonium of code-based creatures that today orchestrates our internet. Digging into real-life examples like sluggish connection speeds, Comcast’s efforts to control peer-to-peer networking, and Pirate Bay’s attempts to elude daemonic control (and skirt copyright), McKelvey shows how daemons have been central to the internet, greatly influencing everyday users. Internet Daemons asks important questions about how much control is being handed over to these automated, autonomous programs, and the consequences for transparency and oversight. Table of Contents Abbreviations and Technical Terms Introduction 1. The Devil We Know: Maxwell’s Demon, Cyborg Sciences, and Flow Control 2. Possessing Infrastructure: Nonsynchronous Communication, IMPs, and Optimization 3. IMPs, OLIVERs, and Gateways: Internetworking before the Internet 4. Pandaemonium: The Internet as Daemons 5. Suffering from Buffering? Affects of Flow Control 6. The Disoptimized: The Ambiguous Tactics of the Pirate Bay 7. A Crescendo of Online Interactive Debugging? Gamers, Publics and Daemons Conclusion Acknowledgments Appendix: Internet Measurement and Mediators Notes Bibliography Index Reviews Beneath social media, beneath search, Internet Daemons reveals another layer of algorithms: deeper, burrowed into information networks. Fenwick McKelvey is the best kind of intellectual spelunker, taking us deep into the infrastructure and shining his light on these obscure but vital mechanisms. What he has delivered is a precise and provocative rethinking of how to conceive of power in and among networks. —Tarleton Gillespie, author of Custodians of the Internet Internet Daemons is an original and important contribution to the field of digital media studies. Fenwick McKelvey extensively maps and analyzes how daemons influence data exchanges across Internet infrastructures. This study insightfully demonstrates how daemons are transformative entities that enable particular ways of transferring information and connecting up communication, with significant social and political consequences. —Jennifer Gabrys, author of Program Eart

2014 Results from the Network Diagnostic Tool in Canada as part of CRTC BSO Intervention, file number 8663-C12-201503186

The intervention provides geo-located Internet performance data to assist in the evaluation of wireline Internet provision in Canada. It contributes public-domain data from Internet measurements collected across Canada during 2014. Measurements result from the Network Diagnostic Tool run through the Measurement Lab Consortium. Data submitted joins these measurements to pre-existing geographic information systems in Canada. The intervention at this point does not interpret data rather it hopes to contribute to the overall discussion at the hearings by submitting open data in a manner accessible to stakeholders and connected to other demographic data in Canada

Bugging Out: Darknets as Parasites of Large-scale Media Objects

Platforms and infrastructures have quickly become seminal concepts to understand large-scale computational systems. The difference between a platform and an infrastructure is subject to debate. In this paper, we use the concept of the darknet to describe how infrastructure tends toward being public with other things where platforms tend to private relations. The darknet reveals these relations negatively, as we discuss, by turning these media objects into that which they desire not to be. We analyze these negative relations through the concept of the parasite developed by Michel Serres. Through following how darknets parasite both platforms and infrastructure, we suggest a need to develop new concepts to understand the diversity of relations now possible in a network society

Using video-reflexive ethnography to capture the complexity of leadership enactment in the healthcare workplace

This research was part of LG’s Ph.D. research which was generously funded by NHS Education for Scotland through SMERC.Current theoretical thinking asserts that leadership should be distributed across many levels of healthcare organisations to improve the patient experience and staff morale. However, much healthcare leadership education focusses on the training and competence of individuals and little attention is paid to the interprofessional workplace and how its inherent complexities might contribute to the emergence of leadership. Underpinned by complexity theory, this research aimed to explore how interprofessional healthcare teams enact leadership at a micro-level through influential acts of organising. A whole (interprofessional) team workplace-based study utilising video-reflexive ethnography occurred in two UK clinical sites. Thematic framework analyses of the video data (video-observation and video-reflexivity sessions) were undertaken, followed by in-depth analyses of human–human and human–material interactions. Data analysis revealed a complex interprofessional environment where leadership is a dynamic process, negotiated and renegotiated in various ways throughout interactions (both formal and informal). Being able to “see” themselves at work gave participants the opportunity to discuss and analyse their everyday leadership practices and challenge some of their sometimes deeply entrenched values, beliefs, practices and assumptions about healthcare leadership. These study findings therefore indicate a need to redefine the way that medical and healthcare educators facilitate leadership development and argue for new approaches to research which shifts the focus from leaders to leadership.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Internet daemons: digital communications possessed

We’re used to talking about how tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon rule the internet, but what about daemons? Ubiquitous programs that have colonized the Net’s infrastructure—as well as the devices we use to access it—daemons are little known. Fenwick McKelvey weaves together history, theory, and policy to give a full account of where daemons come from and how they influence our lives—including their role in hot-button issues like network neutrality. Going back to Victorian times and the popular thought experiment Maxwell’s Demon, McKelvey charts how daemons evolved from concept to reality, eventually blossoming into the pandaemonium of code-based creatures that today orchestrates our internet. Digging into real-life examples like sluggish connection speeds, Comcast’s efforts to control peer-to-peer networking, and Pirate Bay’s attempts to elude daemonic control (and skirt copyright), McKelvey shows how daemons have been central to the internet, greatly influencing everyday users. Internet Daemons asks important questions about how much control is being handed over to these automated, autonomous programs, and the consequences for transparency and oversight. Table of Contents Abbreviations and Technical Terms Introduction 1. The Devil We Know: Maxwell’s Demon, Cyborg Sciences, and Flow Control 2. Possessing Infrastructure: Nonsynchronous Communication, IMPs, and Optimization 3. IMPs, OLIVERs, and Gateways: Internetworking before the Internet 4. Pandaemonium: The Internet as Daemons 5. Suffering from Buffering? Affects of Flow Control 6. The Disoptimized: The Ambiguous Tactics of the Pirate Bay 7. A Crescendo of Online Interactive Debugging? Gamers, Publics and Daemons Conclusion Acknowledgments Appendix: Internet Measurement and Mediators Notes Bibliography Index Reviews Beneath social media, beneath search, Internet Daemons reveals another layer of algorithms: deeper, burrowed into information networks. Fenwick McKelvey is the best kind of intellectual spelunker, taking us deep into the infrastructure and shining his light on these obscure but vital mechanisms. What he has delivered is a precise and provocative rethinking of how to conceive of power in and among networks. —Tarleton Gillespie, author of Custodians of the Internet Internet Daemons is an original and important contribution to the field of digital media studies. Fenwick McKelvey extensively maps and analyzes how daemons influence data exchanges across Internet infrastructures. This study insightfully demonstrates how daemons are transformative entities that enable particular ways of transferring information and connecting up communication, with significant social and political consequences. —Jennifer Gabrys, author of Program Eart

Cranks, clickbait and cons: on the acceptable use of political engagement platforms

NationBuilder connects voters, politicians, volunteers and staffers in an integrated digital system. Political parties across the globe use it to manage data and campaigns. Unlike most political technology providers, NationBuilder is nonpartisan and sells to anyone. Given recent controversy around political technology, this paper looks for empirical examples of questionable use. Drawing on a 2017 scan of NationBuilder installations globally, the study identifies three questionable uses as: (1) a mobilisation tool for hate or groups targeting cultural or ethnic identities, (2) a profiling tool for deceptive advertising or stealth media, and (3) a fundraising tool for entrepreneurial journalism. These questionable uses may require NationBuilder to revise its 'Acceptable Usage Policy' and raises broader questions about the responsibilities of political technology firms to liberal democracy

Ends and Ways: The Algorithmic Politics of Network Neutrality

The Internet in Canada is an assemblage of private and public networks. A variety of institutions and networking codes manage these networks. Conflicts exist between these parties despite their interconnection. Tensions heightened when commercial ISPs began managing traffic on their network using sophisticated routing algorithms. Concerned parties demanded legislation based on a network neutrality principle to prevent undue discrimination. While the network neutrality controversy has been addressed as a question of public policy, the controversy also includes a conflict between various codes constituting networks in Canada. The conflict between codes involve two key networking software that manifest incongruous networks. Their algorithms, the logics embedded in code, differentiate the different types of networking code. The two types of algorithms are Quality of Service and End-to-End. These algorithms treat different modalities of Internet communication differently, in part due to their deployment by different institutions. Quality of Service allows for the tiering of traffic by carriers. Commercial carriers have popularized this algorithm to promote value-added services and prevent network congestions. End-to-end algorithms, on the other hand, enforce a strict equality between modalities of communication. Peer-to-peer applications have popularized an extreme version of the end-to-algorithm, treating all nodes as equals. The popularity and growth of both these algorithms pulls the Internet in different directions, creating conflicts over its future. Through an extended review of these two algorithms and their intersection, this paper confronts how code plays a role in the network neutrality controversy

Out from the Edges: Multi-site Videoconferencing as a Public Sphere in First Nations

The paper examines multi-site videoconferencing in Northern Ontario as a public sphere. The theory of the public highlights the political effect of multi-site videoconferencing and how the technology contributes to the well-being of the community. To analyze the political effects of videoconferencing, the paper describes a case of the community use of multi-site videoconferencing based on video analysis and semi-structured interviews. The case occurred in 2007 and connected a number of First Nation communities across Canada for simultaneous audio-visual exchange. K-Net Services in Ontario hosted the meeting to gauge the feasibility of public meetings through videoconferencing and to document an example of community uses of the technology. K-Net Services works to develop their videoconferencing infrastructure as a public space. Our findings suggest K-Net\u2019s activities have developed a media institution best understood as a counter-public sphere for their service region. The case meeting shows a potential new opportunity to further integrate videoconferencing into community development.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

Remodelling internet infrastructure: A first look at platform governance in the era of ChatGPT

OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the hybrid private company–nonprofit’s latest artificial intelligence (AI) project, arrives just as the Government of Canada attempts to pass its own response to AI: the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA). Amidst ongoing debates over ChatGPT and its growing connections to major platforms, we draw attention to the complex web of policy concerns this very new technology raises and urge greater consideration of the information commons as a key policy frame to understand AI chatbots and the large-language models (LLMs) used to train them. ChatGPT could not exist without the collective production of resources to support and maintain these commons, and its exploitation of them will only continue as OpenAI and its competitors search for ways to monetize chatbots